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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends, Tips & Tricks
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SGIA Offers Free Webinars for Graphics Providers in 2014

SGIA has released its 2014 schedule of free Webinars, which SGIA says presents unique information and fosters important discussion about industry topics in 60 minutes or less.

SGIA WebinarsThe upcoming Webinars cover a variety of topics, including: Business management, sales advice, 3D printing techniques, color management, garment decorating methods, setting up and creating screen printing artwork, wide-format dye sublimation, installing window films and more.

The 2014 Webinar series starts with the session Finding Savings Before & After the Print on Jan. 15 at 2 p.m. ET. SGIA’s Dan Marx will moderate a discussion panel between industry experts on the topic of how companies can differentiate themselves and carve out a competitive advantage by looking to become leaner and seeking new profit opportunities.

Here’s the SGIA Webinar schedule in 2014…

  • 3D Embellishment Technologies: Jan. 29
  • Way To Grow: Feb. 12
  • Who is Responsible for Correct Color? Feb. 19
  • Water Based Garment Inks: Feb. 26
  • Creative Art for Screen Printing: March 5
  • Seven Highly Effective, Low-Cost Marketing Habits: March 12
  • Top Ten Sign Code Considerations: March 19
  • QC for Curing of Screen Printing Inks: April 9
  • Steps for Wide-Format Dye-Sublimation Success: April 16
  • Pricing the Print: April 23
  • What is Your Break-Over Point? April 30
  • Navigating the “Green” Jungle: May 7
  • Selecting the Right Sales Compensation Plan: May 14
  • UV LED Curing Case Studies: May 21
  • Understanding and Installing Window Films: June 11
  • OSHA Came to Call – And Found A Problem! June 18
  • Digital Textile Finishing Technologies: June 25

All Webinars are subject to change and free unless otherwise noted. Webinars are 60 minutes long, beginning at 2 p.m. ET and broadcast online. A complete schedule can be found at SGIA.org.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Simplifying Sales and Sidestepping Sign Restrictions with Perforated Window Film

Sears Auto Center Window Graphics by AW Artworks
Nothing fancy here, but these window graphics, printed on LexJet Aqueous Perforated Window Vinyl (70/30) by AW Artworks, get the word out about all of the services this Sears Auto Center provides.

On-premise signage is arguably the most effective way to get the word out about your business to a mobile audience, especially given the fracturing of media through this, that and the other app and social media.

Many businesses struggle with restrictive sign codes or shopping center guidelines that make it difficult to stand out from the crowd. In the case of a Sears Auto Center in Madison, Wis., the mall in which the center is located doesn’t allow much outside of a main ID sign.

The Auto Center tried various types of banners and even a large Michelin Man blow-up, all of which had to be taken down per the mall’s signage rules. So the Auto Center’s owner turned to Andy Wredberg, owner of AW Artworks, based down the road in Sun Prairie, Wis.

Though this type of project is not in AW Artworks’ wheelhouse, as Wredberg puts it, he wanted to help and try something outside his wheelhouse, which is primarily fine art and photo reproductions.

“They had some mismatched vinyl lettering on their garage doors and wanted something more attractive to draw more attention to the variety of services they offer,” explains Wredberg. “I talked to Rob Finkel at LexJet and he recommended LexJet Aqueous Perforated Vinyl (70/30), so we ordered a sample and tested it on the window. We ordered a roll of it, laid it out, printed it, sprayed it with a clear, water-based poly and installed it today. It went on easily and it looks sharp. They wanted to be able to see out and it provides some shade inside as well.”

Car Window Graphics
With the leftover window perf material from the Sears project, AW Artworks produced these popular stickers for the back windows of cars for Wisconsin-proud people. Andy Wredberg reports that they’ve sold about a dozen of these.

Now this type of project is squarely in AW Artworks’ wheelhouse, and Wredberg plans to use it on the studio’s sidewalk-facing windows to promote this additional product line. Based on similar window promotions AW Artworks has done in the past for banner stands and canvas wraps, AW Artworks should see more of this type of work in the future.

“I was a little concerned at first because we don’t normally do this type of application. I thought installation would be beyond my skill set, but I just pulled the release liner off a couple of inches to get it started, smoothed it down and was really easy. It only took about an hour,” says Wredberg. “It’s very readable from far away. They’re really a full-service auto center and I don’t think a lot of people realize the capabilities they have, so this will help them.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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A Professional Showroom that Sells at Spectra Imaging

Spectra Imaging Showroom

When opportunity knocks Spectra Imaging’s owner, Brian Rogers, answers. Rogers has had his eye on a space adjacent to Spectra Imaging’s offices and production facility for the past couple of years and when it became available he jumped on it.

It's a natural progression from Spectra Imaging's new showroom into the conference room.
It’s a natural progression from Spectra Imaging’s new showroom into the conference room.

“The area is perfect for a showroom because it naturally leads into our conference room. Our sales staff can take clients through the showroom first and then go into the conference room for a meeting,” says Rogers. “People are so visual and if you have the products set up then they sell themselves a lot easier than simply showing them photographs of your work.”

The makeover was simple: they took the doors off the hinges, replaced the carpet and painted the walls to match the rest of Spectra Imaging’s interior. The overall effect is professional, which is exactly how Spectra Imaging prefers to position itself, and happens to be how it operates as well.

Spectra Imaging's lobby is tastefully decorated, providing a professional atmosphere in which to conduct business.
Spectra Imaging’s lobby is tastefully decorated, providing a professional atmosphere in which to conduct business.

Spectra Imaging is tastefully decorated, as you can see in the photos, while it promotes its work through well-conceived pieces, from the displays in the showroom to the inkjet-printed images in the conference room, as well as framed pieces touting the company’s recognition from both inside and outside the industry.

Rogers reports that the showroom has more than its duty and exceeded expectations as far as generating interest, and ultimately, sales. The key is to set it up so that it makes sense. In other words, there’s a natural progression from one display to the next so that potential clients see options from good to best to meet their needs from both a budgetary and messaging standpoint.

Of course you can’t show everything, particularly those larger projects that would take up the entire space if they were replicated in the showroom. However, and perhaps most importantly, it shows the variety of inkjet materials and finishes on which their graphics can be printed.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles, Marketing & Sales, Tips & Tricks
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The Photo Booth Option to Generate Additional Cash Flow

Photobooth for a photography business

Dan Johnson, owner of Dan Johnson Photography in Grand Rapids, Mich., is a regular fixture here at the LexJet Blog. Johnson is always chock full of great ideas (make sure to click here to read about his spray booth, for instance) that build business and generate cash flow.

His latest venture is a portable photo booth that he can take to special events and weddings. Johnson says he created a makeshift photo booth to fulfill requests for a photo booth and decided it was time to buy a pre-built booth to better satisfy demand and create an additional profit center.

Taking pictures in a photo booth“We’re always looking for other ways to generate income with minimal infrastructure and without totally changing what we’re doing. One of our big commercial clients called last year who was putting on a Christmas party and wanted to know if we had a photo booth. I didn’t want to say no, so I figured out how to do it on my own with a camera, tripod, computer and a dye-sub printer. I literally took pieces and parts out of my studio and built this makeshift photo booth. It went pretty well, and then we got a couple of more calls for a photo booth,” explains Johnson. “For the makeshift photo booth I hang curtains in a square and inside the curtain there’s a camera on a tripod and a laptop computer with a program on it where the people inside the booth can click on the mouse and it counts down. It takes a series of three pictures and sends it to a dye-sub printer.”

Johnson recently purchased a professional photo booth, which he says can range from about $6,000 to $10,000. The professional booth is housed in pre-fabricated travel boxes. The bottom box has a printer and a cabinet for supplies, and the top box has the computer and the camera.

“Everything is mounted and secured. You take them out of the car and roll them out like a suitcase to the event, stack one box on top of the other, they lock together, set up a curtain system, plug it in and you’re up and running,” says Johnson. “There’s lighting and it’s all self-contained. It looks finished and professional. If I can use it 20 or 30 times next year it fits into the no-brainer category.”

Johnson adds that he charges a flat fee and offers unlimited prints. That sounds somewhat risky on the surface, but Johnson did the math and found it really wasn’t that risky.

“Realistically, everyone isn’t going to go through the booth four times and you’re printing 2-inch strips on dye-sub paper. So, let’s say we have 250 people at a wedding, which would be a large wedding in our area, and if everyone went through with their significant other it would generate 125 4x6s. A roll of this paper can print 300 4x6s,” says Johnson. “If I go through a roll of paper at every event, that’s about $150 in cost plus what I pay an employee to man it, and that’s it.”

So far, Johnson has booked several events for the rest of the year and into 2013, and he’s running special promotions on the photo booth service. “That should help generate cash up front to pay for the system and some profit on top of that. Basically, we’re not going into debt to expand our services,” he says.

Johnson is also hoping to generate some ancillary printing business in the process by offering larger prints, printed on LexJet media with his Epson printers, that people could order at the booth. He’ll start with a paper ordering system first as he figures out how to integrate more automated print orders with an iPad.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Louisville Slugger: How Spectra Imaging Built a Thriving and Growing Business

Window graphics for a grocery store chain

Brian and Leslie Rogers started Spectra Imaging in their 500-square-foot garage about seven years ago with a Mac mini and a Canon iPF8000. Since that time, Spectra Imaging has grown exponentially, eventually occupying 6,000 square feet of space in a Louisville, Ky., office building, adding additional employees and ramping up its production capabilities.

Main identification sign for a companyWhile Spectra Imaging’s success is based on the usual ingredients – high-quality output, customer service and finding the right products for production – it’s the intangibles that have helped set the company apart.

First, Spectra Imaging is debt-free. All of its equipment purchases are paid for, alleviating the additional burden that debt payments can have on a company. Second, Spectra Imaging emphasizes a show-and-tell approach to sales.

“The growth of our company is attributed to our drive and determination and just getting out in front of people,” explains Brian Rogers. “You can’t just walk in there, hand them a brochure and tell them that this is what you can do. When our salespeople meet with customers they have a sample case and an iPad. There’s an image on our site of a very large sign on the front of a building for a hardware company, for example, and our salespeople have a smaller version of that exact sign, printed on the same material and applied to the same substrate. That way, they can see how the material works and what it looks like when it’s done. A brochure is not good enough.”

Wall decor graphicsRogers says this is especially effective with Photo Tex PSA Repositionable Fabric from LexJet. Customers can see first-hand how easy it is to work with and how versatile it is in a variety of applications.

Whatever the material used, Spectra Imaging is armed with physical samples and various options for a collaborative, consultative and ultimately productive meeting.

“Customers are looking for something different and unique; they don’t want the same stuff they’ve been getting. LexJet has been instrumental in keeping us updated about new products we can add to our sample case so we can show customers what’s available and what they can do with them,” adds Rogers.

Spectra Imaging can provide just about any imaging product and service to its customers, including graphic design, scanning original artwork, printing and stretching canvas, custom framing and practically any large-format application.

Photo reproduction for interior decorNow armed with two HP 9000 solvent printers, two HP Designjet 5000 aqueous inkjet printers and two Canon iPF8000s, as well as fabrication and finishing capabilities with a CNC router and a laminator, Spectra Imaging is well positioned to make its next move: hiring an additional salesperson and production specialist as well as adding more printer fire power.

Rogers says his favorite materials are the aforementioned Photo Tex PSA Fabric (both Aqueous and Solvent), LexJet Simple Adhesive Vinyl (Semi-Matte and Gloss), LexJet 10 Mil Opaque Display Film, LexJet Production Satin Photo Paper PSA and LexJet Sunset Fine Art, Photo and Canvas media.

“The great thing about Sammi [Spectra Imaging’s LexJet customer specialist Samantha Calabrese] is that she’s familiar with the products we’ve used and is quite helpful about making recommendations and letting us know about new products,” says Rogers. “Even if we’re not buying a product from LexJet, like our HP 9000, Sammi did some research and helped us find other LexJet customers who had one so we could get some feedback from them about the printer before we bought it.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Instant Marketing with Inkjet at Ridinger Photo

Printing window displays for a photography studio

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about one that’s six feet tall, almost four feet wide and glows? Mike Ridinger, owner of Ridinger’s The Art of Photography in downtown Lewiston, Idaho, says the big photos he printed to hang in his storefront were worth not only a thousand words, but likely created more than a thousand impressions.

Ridinger explains that the town of Lewiston hosted its annual Hot August Nights car show, blocking off downtown for hundreds of show cars, live music and other activities. Thousands of people came from all over for the event, and Ridinger was ready for them at his downtown studio with five big prints: three senior portraits and two family portraits.

Printing promotional displays for a photo studio“I like sitting in the studio and watching people come by to stop to look at them. They’re so big that people can’t help but look at them,” says Ridinger. “We also posted photos of the window displays on Facebook and we had 41 comments just yesterday.”

Ridinger says he took his cue from The Gap and its storefront marketing approach. To give the prints more life at night, Ridinger backed them with halogen lights, creating a glow that lures people to the windows.

“We use the heavier Sunset Photo eSatin Paper for the display prints in our studio, but for this we chose a more economical and thinner paper, LexJet 8 Mil Production Satin Photo Paper, for the window displays,” says Ridinger.

Ridinger framed the prints with four-inch baseboard molding, stained the molding, cut it to size and stapled them together. The bottoms of the frames rest on the floor and are balanced with fishing line strung from the ceiling to the tops of the frames.

“Inkjet printing is our way of immediate marketing. I love it because if we want to put something up right away, we can do these big-time prints: we pick out the images and I just lay them out and print,” says Ridinger.

Promotional displays with wide format inkjetRidinger adds that they’re in the process of re-doing all of their studio displays using Sunset Photo eSatin Paper and Sunset Select Matte Canvas. At any given time, he says, the studio features about 30 large wall portraits in three different themed areas: children, families and seniors.

Ridinger also has a display program where he pre-sells prints for half off in exchange for being able to use them as display prints in his studio for a certain time period. “We call the client to see if they’re interested. If they are, they get a nice print for half off, which pays for my in-studio advertising,” says Ridinger.